Jeff Hoffman
Plastic Monkey Poem
Here’s my advice, says the plastic monkey
on my shelf. Write a poem and make it ugly
and true. I’m in bed, wide awake, 3:00 a.m.
It’s summer, a scorcher, and I’m failing
yet again to ID my AC’s particular stink,
while nearby my air cleaner purrs out
a subtler version of the same malevolence.
Something about those plastic monkey eyes
shining their uncanny come-hither valley
across my room: how at a certain angle
anything can look tender and pleading,
incontrovertibly human. Except lately,
my urge to confess has felt like the first sign
of a perverting ambition, and all my epiphanies
quickly dwarf themselves into villains
grinning at the end of their pleasures.
Plastic monkey friend—with your wind-up key,
your cymbals, your feet marching on when standing
or toppled, when falling or thrown, when kidnapped
by a dog, when rescued by my nephew—if I ratchet
your ratchet, will you help me dig through the ooze
of this crawling, sleepless night? Summon me a fire;
paint me a panic of houses; make me eat the smoke
from the trees on a mountain where once I used to hike.
You are deathless and unaware, and strips of you
will tinsel the globe forever. Clang your cymbals
and watch my kind fade. Here comes the hiccup
called extinction. Here come the dazzlings
beyond my mammal words—my alchemical freaks
yodeling at the moon. Here comes the truth: the monkey
went missing years ago. I’m the last me standing—you
the last you: we scads of uniques, we last-me billions.
Other work by Jeff Hoffman